<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
  <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"  http-equiv="content-type" />
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../style.css" />
  <title>SOCI - Firebird Backend Reference</title>
</head>

<body>
<p class="banner">SOCI - The C++ Database Access Library</p>

<h2>Firebird Backend Reference</h2>

<div class="navigation">
<a href="#prerequisites">Prerequisites</a><br />
<div class="navigation-indented">
  <a href="#versions">Supported Versions</a><br />
  <a href="#tested">Tested Platforms</a><br />
  <a href="#required">Required Client Libraries</a><br />
</div>
<a href="#connecting">Connecting to the Database</a><br />
     
<a href="#support">SOCI Feature Support</a><br />
<div class="navigation-indented">
    <a href="#dynamic">Dynamic Binding</a><br />
    <a href="#bindingbyname">Binding by Name</a><br />
    <a href="#bulk">Bulk Operations</a><br />
    <a href="#transactions">Transactions</a><br />
    <a href="#blob">BLOB Data Type</a><br />
    <a href="#rowid">RowID Data Type</a><br />
    <a href="#nested">Nested Statements</a><br />
    <a href="#procedures">Stored Procedures</a><br />
</div>
  <a href="#native">Accessing the Native Database API</a><br />
  <a href="#extensions">Backend-specific Extensions</a><br />
<div class="navigation-indented">
    <a href="#firebird_soci_error">FirebirdSOCIError</a><br />
</div>
  <a href="#options">Configuration options</a><br />
</div>

<h3 id="prerequisites">Prerequisites</h3>
<h4 id="versions">Supported Versions</h4>

<p>The SOCI Firebird backend is currently supported for use with Firebird 1.5.<br />
Other versions of Firebird may work as well, but they have not been tested by the SOCI team.</p>

<h4 id="tested">Tested Platforms</h4>

<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr><th>Firebird version</th><th>Operating System</th><th>Compiler</th></tr>
<tr><td>1.5.2.4731</td><td>SunOS 5.10</td><td>g++ 3.4.3</td></tr>
<tr><td>1.5.2.4731</td><td>Windows XP</td><td>Visual C++ 8.0</td></tr>
<tr><td>1.5.3.4870</td><td>Windows XP</td><td>Visual C++ 8.0 Professional</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>

<h4 id="required">Required Client Libraries</h4>

<p>The Firebird backend requires Firebird's <code>libfbclient</code> client library.</p>

<h4 id="connecting">Connecting to the Database</h4>

<p>To establish a connection to a Firebird database, create a Session object
using the firebird backend factory together with a connection string:</p>

<pre class="example">
BackEndFactory const &amp;backEnd = firebird;
Session sql(backEnd, 
        "service=/usr/local/firbird/db/test.fdb user=SYSDBA password=masterkey");
</pre>

<p>or simply:</p>

<pre class="example">
Session sql(firebird, 
        "service=/usr/local/firbird/db/test.fdb user=SYSDBA password=masterkey");
</pre>

<p>The set of parameters used in the connection string for Firebird is:</p>
<ul>
  <li>service</li>
  <li>user</li>
  <li>password</li>
  <li>role</li>
  <li>charset</li>
</ul>
<p>The following parameters have to be provided as part of the connection string :
<i>service</i>, <i>user</i>, <i>password</i>. Role and charset parameters are optional.</p>

<p>Once you have created a <code>Session</code> object as shown above, you can use it to access the database, for example:</p>
<pre class="example">
int count;
sql &lt;&lt; "select count(*) from user_tables", into(count);
</pre>

<p>(See the <a href="../basics.html">SOCI basics</a> and <a href="../exchange.html">exchanging data</a> documentation for general information on using the <code>Session</code> class.)</p>

<h3 id="support">SOCI Feature Support</h3>
<h4 id="dynamic">Dynamic Binding</h4>

<p>The Firebird backend supports the use of the SOCI <code>Row</code> class, which facilitates retrieval of data whose type is not known at compile time.</p>

<p>When calling <code>Row::get&lt;T&gt;()</code>, the type you should pass as T depends upon the underlying database type. For the Firebird backend, this type mapping is:</p>

<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <th>Firebird Data Type</th>
      <th>SOCI Data Type</th>
      <th><code>Row::get&lt;T&gt;</code> specializations</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>numeric, decimal <br /><i>(where scale &gt; 0)</i></td>
      <td><code>eDouble</code></td>
      <td><code>double</code></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>numeric, decimal <sup>[<a href="#note1">1</a>]</sup><br /><i>(where scale = 0)</i></td>
      <td><code>eInteger, eDouble</code></td>
      <td><code>int, double</code></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>double precision, float</td>
      <td><code>eDouble</code></td>
      <td><code>double</code></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>smallint, integer</td>
      <td><code>eInteger</code></td>
      <td><code>int</code></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>char, varchar</td>
      <td><code>eString</code></td>
      <td><code>std::string</code></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>date, time, timestamp</td>
      <td><code>eDate</code></td>
      <td><code>std::tm</code><code></code></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<p><a name="note1" />&nbsp;<sup>[1]</sup> &nbsp;There is also 64bit integer type for larger values which is 
currently not supported.</p>
<p>(See the <a href="../exchange.html#dynamic">dynamic resultset binding</a> documentation for general information on using the <code>Row</code> class.)</p>

<h4 id="bindingbyname">Binding by Name</h4>

<p>In addition to <a href="../exchange.html#bind_position">binding by position</a>, the Firebird backend supports <a href="../exchange.html#bind_name">binding by name</a>, via an overload of the <code>use()</code> function:</p>

<pre class="example">
int id = 7;
sql &lt;&lt; "select name from person where id = :id", use(id, "id")
</pre>

<p>It should be noted that parameter binding by name is supported only by means of emulation, since the underlying API used by the backend doesn't provide this feature.</p>

<h4 id="bulk">Bulk Operations</h4>

<p>The Firebird backend has full support for SOCI's <a href="../statements.html#bulk">bulk operations</a> interface. This feature is also supported by emulation.</p> 

<h4 id="transactions">Transactions</h4>

<p><a href="../statements.html#transactions">Transactions</a> are also fully 
supported by the Firebird backend. In fact, there is always a transaction which is automatically commited in <code>Session's</code> destructor.
<br />See the <a href="#options">Configuration options</a> section for more details.</p>

<h4 id="blob">BLOB Data Type</h4>

<p>The Firebird backend supports working with data stored in columns of type Blob, via SOCI's <a href="../exchange.html#blob"><code>BLOB</code></a> class.</p>
<p>It should by noted, that entire Blob data is fetched from database to allow random read and write access. 
This is because Firebird itself allows only writing to a new Blob or reading from existing one -
modifications of existing Blob means creating a new one. Firebird backend hides those details from user.</p>

<h4 id="rowid">RowID Data Type</h4>

<p>This feature is not supported by Firebird backend.</p>

<h4 id="nested">Nested Statements</h4>

<p>This feature is not supported by Firebird backend.</p>

<h4 id="procedures">Stored Procedures</h4>

<p>Firebird stored procedures can be executed by using SOCI's <a href="../statements.html#procedures">Procedure</a> class.</p>

<h3 id="native">Acessing the native database API</h3>

<p>SOCI provides access to underlying datbabase APIs via several getBackEnd() functions, as described in the <a href="../beyond.html">beyond SOCI</a> documentation.</p>

<p>The Firebird backend provides the following concrete classes for navite API access:</p>

<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <th>Accessor Function</th>
      <th>Concrete Class</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><code>SessionBackEnd* Session::getBackEnd()</code></td>
      <td><code>FirebirdSessionBackEnd</code></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><code>StatementBackEnd* Statement::getBackEnd()</code></td>
      <td><code>FirebirdStatementBackEnd</code></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><code>BLOBBackEnd* BLOB::getBackEnd()</code></td>
      <td><code>FirebirdBLOBBackEnd</code></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><code>RowIDBackEnd* RowID::getBackEnd()</code></td>
      <td><code>FirebirdRowIDBackEnd</code></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>


<h3 id="extensions">Backend-specific extensions</h3>
<h4 id="firebird_soci_error">FirebirdSOCIError</h4>

<p>The Firebird backend can throw instances of class <code>FirebirdSOCIError</code>,
which is publicly derived from <code>SOCIError</code> and has an
additional public <code>status_</code> member containing the Firebird status vector.</p>

<h3 id="options">Configuration options</h3>

<p>The Firebird backend recognize the following configuration macros :</p>
<ul>
<li><code>SOCI_FIREBIRD_NORESTARTTRANSACTION </code> - 
    Transactions will not be restarted automatically after commit() or rollback().
    The default is to restart transactions.</li>
</ul>

<p class="copyright">Copyright &copy; 2004-2006 Maciej Sobczak, Stephen Hutton, Rafal Bobrowski</p>
</body>
</html>
